This film is the story of the thousands of torries built along the coast of Italy, each one in view of the other, to protect the villages from invasion of armies and marauding pirates roaming the Mediterranean Sea.

These watchtowers are situated in some of the most beautiful and spectacular places on the planet, and have survived attacks by man and nature for thousands of years.

The film takes the viewer over centuries of time through the eyes of the Vigili of the towers and the ferocious line of “Saracen Pirates.”

Re-enactments of the life of the Vigili in the Torres and pirate attacks are based on historical accounts.

Many of the locations with the most dramatic and beautiful surroundings and the most interesting Torre history are featured.

Until now, the fascinating and exciting story of the Torres had never been told and was unknown to the world!

“Barbarossa and the Towers of Italy”
Screening in the Levante International Film Festival
Friday November 13, 2009
Bari – Apulia, Italy

]]>http://wooleypeterwooley.com/uncategorized/barbarossa-and-the-towers-of-italy/feed1How I met Mel Brooks and was hired for Blazing Saddles (and God bless Jack Starrett)http://wooleypeterwooley.com/people-ive-known/mel-brooks/how-i-met-mel-brooks-and-was-hired-for-blazing-saddles-and-god-bless-jack-starrett
http://wooleypeterwooley.com/people-ive-known/mel-brooks/how-i-met-mel-brooks-and-was-hired-for-blazing-saddles-and-god-bless-jack-starrett#commentsFri, 20 Nov 2009 06:48:08 +0000adminhttp://wooleypeterwooley.com/?p=158A short video about the first time I met Mel Brooks and how I won the job on Blazing Saddles. I also talk about my friendship with Jack Starrett and our work on Cleopatra Jones.

]]>http://wooleypeterwooley.com/artwork/lamp-by-peter-wooley-2008/feed2Katharine Hepburn Climbs a Fencehttp://wooleypeterwooley.com/uncategorized/katharine-hepburn-climbs-a-fence
http://wooleypeterwooley.com/uncategorized/katharine-hepburn-climbs-a-fence#commentsSun, 06 Sep 2009 21:37:47 +0000adminhttp://wooleypeterwooley.com/?p=128Video clip: A short story about the first time I met Miss Katharine Hepburn, and the wild ride around Culver City…

I am often asked, with all the pictures I’ve done what my favorite is. It has to be this one. Look at my record; Nuclear destruction of the world, an insane western, another insane piece set in an insane asylum. (There’s a poetic fit for you.), a river boat – whore house, black exploitation pictures, and God only knows how many murders I have helped create.

Now my dear friend, Richard Colla comes to me with a script. “Here,” he says, “this is a lovely little fairy tale starring two little boys, a dog, a hot air balloon, and, oh yes, Katharine Hepburn. Of course I’m directing, and we’re a team. If there is ever going to be a memory buster in your life, this will be it.”

The script was super. The actors were super. The feeling on the set was super. It was a picture about love and respect. It was a picture about trust and wisdom. It was a picture that had me at “fade in”.

The world just isn’t ready for “G” rated picture. . .

You’ll have to rent it, though I suppose it’s still on late night someplace.

]]>http://wooleypeterwooley.com/moviesandtelevision/olly-olly-oxen-free/olly-olly-oxen-free/feed1Fatsohttp://wooleypeterwooley.com/moviesandtelevision/fatso/fatso
http://wooleypeterwooley.com/moviesandtelevision/fatso/fatso#commentsMon, 24 Aug 2009 23:37:00 +0000adminhttp://wooleypeterwooley.com/?p=113Just knowing Anne Bancroft was such a thrill for me. But to work with her was icing on the cake. I have been in love with her, seems like all my life. Still am, even though she’s no longer with us. She and Mel were the perfect couple; an Italian Catholic and a Jew. A match made in heaven.

]]>http://wooleypeterwooley.com/people-ive-known/harvey-korman/feed2…Out on the Edge of Nowherehttp://wooleypeterwooley.com/short-stories/out-on-the-edge-of-nowhere
http://wooleypeterwooley.com/short-stories/out-on-the-edge-of-nowhere#commentsSat, 15 Aug 2009 02:17:30 +0000adminhttp://wooleypeterwooley.com/?p=91It’s night. A dark, hot, dusty, and lonely night. Out on the edge of Lagos, Nigeria, you might as well be on the edge of nowhere.

You’ve been drinking Cognac in a dive called the Bamboo Cabin, and it’s time to get out of there. The natives are getting as restless as you are. You’re waiting. It seems you’re always waiting. But the cognac has started to kick in, and it’s good to be alone. The shortcut back to the flat is dark, no moon, no ambient light. The trail through the bush is dusty, and the shapes of the trees are close and menacing. Ahead, a fire in a steel drum as blazing, and two figures moving around it cause shadows to dig into shadows.

The smoke brings with it the smell of meat being hopelessly burned. You stop at the fire even though the heat adds to the oppressiveness. The men by the fire seem friendly, chattering away in Yoruba and laughing. If they notice your whiteness, they don’t show it. A brief negotiation, and for one nira, dinner is served. Burnt meat, onion, tomato, and bread wrapped in a newspaper you can’t read, and you burrow back into the darkness.

Back at the flat you peel off the wet shirt and kick off the hiking boots, causing a small dust cloud. The flat: one room, linoleum floor, four bare and dirty mattresses in a row. One window with a screen over it. The screen is not there to keep out flies and mosquitoes, that’s impossible. Instead, it keeps out foot-long lizards. Fifteen or twenty are hanging there, eyeing the rolled up newspaper. Or is it you?

One candle on the floor standing on the remains of other candles and other nights makes the room bounce in its flicker. A warm bottle of Star Beer, Nigeria’s finest, sits among a half-dozen empties. In your camera bag is an opener, and you find it by feel.

You open the beer, spread out the newspaper you can’t read on the floor, check out the lizards one more time, sit on the edge of the mattress, and begin to chew the meat.

For a fleeting moment there is the lonely realization that no one in the world knows where you are. You push the thought away and you eat.

The little people did leave me with many memories. To put it mildly, I ain’t a big guy, but they made me feel like one. One morning we were preparing to shoot. It was very foggy, and the little people had on their Munchkin costumes. All those bright colors and ruffles, and those high voices made them seem like a garden of human flowers. There I was, standing in the middle of them. They were moving about and talking, and I was towering over them. I really did feel like John Wayne in a garden.

Late one sunny Kansas morning I was standing in a field of wildflowers in an area down by the Kansas River the runs through Lawrence. A great arched bridge was in the top of my frame, and I was sketching a set I was planning to put there. It was listed in the script as a tent city, but my sketch was turning into much more. Before my eyes a field of wildflowers was becoming a smoke-and-debris-choked gathering place for a number of victims who were unlucky enough not to have been blown to bits in the blasts. Dying people with haunted eyes were burying the dead with vacant eyes in a common grave. A mother sat under a tin roofed lean-to holding her dead baby. In that field of wildflowers there was no green, the dirt was black, and every natural or man-made thing on the dirt was black. I finished the sketch and walked off the field. I was afraid to turn around for fear the wildflowers would be gone….

…That set got built just as my sketch showed. The day we began shooting the scene, I walked up onto the bridge to get a bird’s-eye view. There was an ancient Asian lady standing there quietly. As I walked up to the rail next to her I noticed that she was crying. She felt my gaze and looked over to me. All she said was, “I was there.” It was a strange compliment, but I will always think of it that way.